Had to rip out a whole backsplash last Wednesday because I didn't check the wall was plumb first

Cost me an extra 6 hours and $90 in new tile to fix it, has anyone else had a single measurement throw off their whole kitchen job?

4 comments

4 Comments

nguyen.angela1mo ago

That floor angle bit samk77 mentioned is brutal, but I'm wondering if the real problem is your ceiling wasn't checked either, since my last job had a ceiling that was bowed down a full inch and it screwed up the tile line from the top down.

reese_hayes711mo ago

Did you check the studs too though... because I found out the hard way that even a plumb wall can hide studs that are all over the place. That's a different kind of nightmare, trust me. But what got me thinking is maybe your floor is the real problem here. If the floor is off even a little, the whole cabinet line follows it and then your backsplash tile has nowhere to go. Sometimes it's not the wall's fault, it's what the wall is sitting on.

samk771mo ago

Man that floor angle is a brutal one nobody talks about. You'll spend a whole day leveling the cabinets and shimming them perfect but the floor is the thing that actually dictates where everything sits. Once the cabinets are locked in the floor's slant is baked into every measurement after that. I learned this the hard way when my countertop guys showed up and the tile backsplash had this weird gap at the bottom that just kept getting wider. Turned out the floor was off almost a half inch across the run and all my careful wall work didnt matter at all. Its like the house foundation itself is the real boss.

thomas_sanchez1mo ago

My house is 80 years old and I've never had a floor cause issues like you're describing. I always use a 4-foot level on the subfloor before anything goes in, and if the floor's off more than an eighth, I'll pour self-leveler or sister the joists to fix it before cabinets ever get near the room. The foundation sets the tone but with the right prep you can zero out any slant before it becomes your problem.